‘I can’t.’

‘I should like you to.’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘It is true. I should like you to forget it.’

‘That sort of thing isn’t meant to be forgotten.’

‘I think perhaps sometimes it is. Or if not forgotten exactly, then put aside.’

‘Olivia, I cannot put you aside.’

‘But some things are – impossible.’

‘That is impossible.’

‘The other,’ she spoke with a low voice, ‘is also impossible.’

They walked in silence, as slowly as they dared.

He said quietly, ‘I think I could make it possible. I have thought about it.’

He had thought about his London flat, his discreet man-servant.

She shook her head.

They were approaching the waiting loaders.

‘Is it something to do with your idea of duty?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice trembled, but she made an effort to achieve accuracy. ‘I won’t know until I get to Heaven whether it is duty or cowardice. I think it is a little to do with the fact that already sometimes I have to say to my son, be good, and already sometimes I wonder how I dare, on what possible grounds I dare to do it.’

‘But Love is the most important thing in the world.’

‘I used to think so too. I think I still do think so. Only I don’t exactly know what Love is.’

‘I know what it is. I can show you. I know I can show you.’

Olivia now felt completely faint. She would have liked to throw herself weeping on Lionel’s breast. She was astonished as much by the strength of her own emotions as by anything else. Steadying herself with a hand on Lionel’s arm, she managed the last few paces towards the loaders and turned with her back towards them to face the wood. Lionel covered her hand with his.

‘I’ll show you,’ he said again.

‘It will be so hard,’ she murmured.

Hard to go on resisting Love, or hard to live under its rule? He did not know, but as the beaters approached and he still kept his hand over hers though Percy Maidment was already holding out his gun, he chose to think the latter. He would show her. Her happiness, marriage, child, reputation, none of it should suffer; only they must love each other.

Gilbert Hartlip looked towards Lionel Stephens. Olivia Lilburn was leaning on his arm, his head was bent towards her. Funny way to behave, Gilbert thought, hanging on to another man’s wife like that when he ought to have been concentrating on his shooting. Those few minutes before the birds came over were important, in Gilbert’s view. One ought to give oneself over to the feeling of anticipation; it sharpened one’s perceptions, made one’s reflexes quicker, when the time came. One ought to be at a white heat of excitement, kept concentrated by a ferocious control. This was what Gilbert believed and practised and it was perhaps the reason why shooting so often left him exhausted.

Seeing the direction of his glance, Albert Jarvis muttered, ‘He’s fifteen ahead of us now, sir.’